Compliance Certification Report

2.12

The institution has developed an acceptable Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) that (1) includes a broad-based institutional process identifying key issues emerging from institutional assessment, (2) focuses on learning outcomes and/or the environment supporting student learning and accomplishing the mission of the institution, (3) demonstrates institutional capability for the initiation, implementation, and completion of the QEP, (4) includes broad-based involvement of the institutional constituencies in the development and proposed implementation of the QEP, and (5) identifies goals and a plan to assess their achievement. (Quality Enhancement Plan)

√ Compliant

Partially Compliant

Non-Compliant

Narrative:

Synergy: UTMB Quality Enhancement Plan

The synergistic potential of interprofessional education is the focus of the Qualify Enhancement Plan at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB). We believe that by pulling together the strengths of our four schools (Medicine, Nursing, Allied Health Science, and the Graduate School for Biomedical Sciences), we can greatly improve the learning environment at our institution.

The QEP Study Group, composed of faculty from all four schools, began work in the spring of 2006. Topic suggestions were solicited from a broad spectrum of stakeholders at UTMB, including course and program directors and students from all four schools. After follow-up involving faculty and students, the QEP Study Group voted unanimously to approve clinical and community-based interdisciplinary teamwork as our topic and the Council of Deans endorsed the following:

We will develop interdisciplinary teamwork experiences in the hospitals, clinics, and community to promote mutual understanding of disciplinary roles, collaboration in planning patient care, joint accountability for decision making and outcomes, and the benefits to the patient and the community of interdisciplinary collaboration.

Students will develop skills and gain experiences working collaboratively across cultures with patients, patientsí families, other healthcare professionals, and community-based providers to enhance patient care and wellness.

Classrooms, clinics, hospital settings, and simulation laboratories currently offer a number of opportunities for interdisciplinary teams and interprofessional learning. In these settings, students learn three things apart from specific medical content: how interprofessional decisions are made, how treatment plans are negotiated, and how uncertainty is professionally resolved. Students state that this type of approach provides opportunities for them to contribute their knowledge, skills sets, and experiences to support and enhance the attributes each discipline brings to the care of patients. UTMB now has the opportunity to move to a more deliberately collaborative and communicative model by adopting an iterative approach that will involve even more of our students.

A QEP Planning Task Force, with membership expanded beyond the original study group to include faculty with experience in interprofessional teamwork, is working to identify: (1) the goals of the QEP (see below); (2) specific, measurable learning objectives; (3) student learning outcomes that will be used to assess the effectiveness of the QEP implementation; (4 ) interprofessional experiences currently in operation on campus and in the community; (5) additional experiences that need to be developed so that students can achieve the goals and objectives of the QEP. A detailed budget will be developed based on the nature and scope of the activities. A phased implementation of additional learning experiences addressing the following goals will occur over approximately a 5-year period.

QEP Goals:

Students will demonstrate understanding of the knowledge, skills, and roles of other healthcare disciplines in providing care to patients.

Students will observe optimal interprofessional teamwork and identify barriers to development of such teams in clinical settings.

Students will learn about, practice, and demonstrate optimal interprofessional teamwork in the delivery of healthcare to patients.

Students will develop sufficient knowledge and skill in optimal interprofessional teamwork that they will be equipped to overcome barriers and to provide leadership in the development and operation of such teams in their future endeavors.

Students will engage in interprofessional projects in areas such as public health, cost-benefit analyses, error reduction, outcomes assessment, and healthcare policy that are aimed at enhancing patient health and wellness in the community, hospitals, and clinics.